Stanford's Bowlsby seizes challenge of Big 12 post

STANFORD

Published 4:00 am, Saturday, May 5, 2012

Photo: LM Otero, Associated Press

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New Big 12 Conference Commissioner Bob Bowlsby, right, smiles at a news conference where he was introduced to the media at Big 12 headquarters Friday, May 4, 2012, in Irving, Texas. At left is Oklahoma State University President Burns Hargis (AP Photo/LM Otero) less

New Big 12 Conference Commissioner Bob Bowlsby, right, smiles at a news conference where he was introduced to the media at Big 12 headquarters Friday, May 4, 2012, in Irving, Texas. At left is Oklahoma State ... more

Photo: LM Otero, Associated Press

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New Big 12 Conference Commissioner Bob Bowlsby wears a cap at the news conference introducing him to the media at Big 12 headquarters Friday, May 4, 2012, in Irving, Texas. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

New Big 12 Conference Commissioner Bob Bowlsby wears a cap at the news conference introducing him to the media at Big 12 headquarters Friday, May 4, 2012, in Irving, Texas. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

Photo: LM Otero, Associated Press

Stanford's Bowlsby seizes challenge of Big 12 post

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Why would anyone willingly quit heading the well-oiled athletic department at sunny, prestigious Stanford to take over a conference known mainly for its fractiousness and changing membership?

Bob Bowlsby said he felt he needed a new challenge, one that would allow him to help change the national landscape of football and other sports. As for his old ambition of being NCAA president, he said, "I think that train has left the station."

In a news conference Friday at Big 12 headquarters in Irving, Texas, and in a teleconference afterward, he said his talks with the conference had started only a week earlier after he was contacted by an executive search firm to see if he was interested in the commissioner job.

He could have stayed at Stanford, where he had worked for six years and had "been happy for a long time," he said. But the lure of the new job was enticing and enabled him to get out of his comfort zone.

"I think you do your best work when you stretch," he said. "I think I'd be very disappointed to retire without having taken this kind of step."

Counting his tenures at Northern Iowa, Iowa and Stanford, he had worked on college campuses for 29 years. As a commissioner, however, "You're able to affect the national agenda," he said.

Bowlsby, 60, said he expects to work 10 more years and to spend all of them in his new position. As of June 15, he takes over an 18-year-old conference that in recent years lost Colorado to the Pac-12 and Nebraska to the Big Ten and was hit last fall by the defections of Missouri and Texas A&M to the Southeastern Conference.

The Big 12 will be back to 10 members in July when it officially welcomes TCU from the Mountain West and distant West Virginia from the Big East.

Bowlsby admitted he entered discussions with three Big 12 presidents apprehensively. "I, like many people, had a vision of this conference as being unstable," he said. He added, "I wouldn't want to be part of something that was going to be a fractured alignment."

He said he became convinced that the conference schools were unified, including Texas, although he said UT "is always going to be an 800-pound gorilla in college athletics."

In contrast to the Pac-12, which is forming its own TV network to complement the rich deals it signed last year with ESPN and Fox, the Big 12 has struggled with uneven revenues among the schools. Last year Texas launched its own Longhorn Network in conjunction with ESPN.

Bowlsby's predecessor, Dan Beebe, was forced out around the same time; some of the other schools felt he favored Texas.

Because Bowlsby had a key role in negotiating the Pac-12's TV deals, Big 12 officials obviously felt he could put the finishing touches on their anticipated 13-year, $1.3 billion extension with ESPN.

His salary with the conference is believed to be more than $1 million annually, although neither he nor the conference would disclose the amount or the length of his contract. He was believed to be making about $700,000 a year at Stanford.

Appearing at the news conference with Oklahoma State President Burns Hargis, chairman of the Big 12 board of directors, Bowlsby joked, "I can't tell you how much better I feel about Stanford's loss to Oklahoma State (in the Fiesta Bowl) this morning."

Discussing his proudest achievements at Stanford, he said, "We worked - and a lot of people have had their hands on the oars - on returning the football program to competitiveness."

He said the school's major sports "are largely in good shape. We were winning Directors' Cups before I got there, and they'll be winning Directors' Cups long after I'm gone."

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